


for the ones, whoever dare

by Checro



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Magic, Unreliable Narrator, Witches, helena is something Other, rachel is human
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-08-13 21:49:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7987408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Checro/pseuds/Checro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody warns Rachel about the woods, about magic, about the deals that monsters make. Or if they do, she doesn't listen. Fairytales are for children, after all.</p><p>Helena knows, though. Oh, she sure knows now.</p><p> </p><p>In which sacrificing a traveling businesswoman to the faeries in the woods backfires for all the reasons one might expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Rachel’s parents never warned her about the Canadian woods. For one thing, they were scientists, and so they saw nothing to fear there, amid the trees and animals. For another thing, they passed away when Rachel was young, before they could impart such lessons upon their only daughter. For yet another, they were English; there wasn’t a lot of point to imparting such lessons.

So Rachel can’t really be blamed for not knowing about the Canadian woods. It’s not her fault, which is really a remarkable change. Things are, when you get down to it, often Rachel’s fault.

None of the above circumstances keep Rachel from hearing about the woods later in life, of course. She doesn’t pay them much mind, though. Wendigos and witches and faeries are all the stuff of children’s tales, and not even the sort she herself got as a child (she got science fiction, stories about making monsters and unravelling mysteries, as if the fantasy of fairy tales wasn’t exactly the same). Still, though, she hears those stories.

The stories she hears grow colder and darker as winter approaches, as the days become shorter and the chill bites at her fingers whenever she steps outside.

Canada is cold and unforgiving, even in urban places like Toronto. Its woods are full of wolves and nightmares just as surely as the glass and metal building in which Rachel worked was full of scientists and nightmares.

Honestly, Rachel can’t help but be the main character in every warning story. The fool. The one who makes all the mistakes. To Rachel, stories of the Canadian woods aren’t even worth listening to. Stories of the woods, and monsters in the woods, wendigos and witches and faeries and above all, wishes.

Really, it’s so cold. And Rachel is so busy. She has so much to do.

So she can’t imagine anything worse than the little town her train broke down next to. “All passengers depart,” says the conductor. “Tracks are blocked, we’ll get back to it tomorrow,” he says. Rachel shuts her eyes, lets out a little hiss of a sigh. Finally she stands up, follows the other sixteen or so passengers off the late night train, into the town proper, if such a small place could even be called that.

She could have flown to her destination. But it was only a few cities over. She had thought it was a waste of time. Perhaps she should have reconsidered.

There was not much she could do now, though. Other than let herself be directed to the nearest hotel. The only hotel in this little nowhere town.

She wants to go home.

A difficult thing to want, when one does not know where their home is. But then again, Rachel Duncan has never been easy to please.

“What are you out here for, girl?” a man asks, as Rachel sits down at a small table in the hotel restaurant, just after she places her order for a small cup of coffee, and Rachel stiffens. She’s hardly a ‘girl’, thank you very much. She’s more than that. Hasn’t been a girl since the fire, honestly.

The man laughs at her. He’s old, Rachel notices, now that she’s looking at him. Older than his voice made him sound. Wizened and hunched.

“A delay,” Rachel answers. Because… well, why not, at this point? She’s already stuck here.

“That’s all? Stuck here on accident? You haven’t gone looking for something? No wishes?”

“No,” Rachel responds, and that’s the end of that, as far as she’s concerned.

“Anything in the world, imagine you could have any one thing in the world, what would it be?”

Rachel doesn’t answer.

Something in her heart does, though. It says… well, it says ‘home.’ But we’ve been over why that’s impossible, haven’t we?

The man smiles at her, like maybe he heard that. Rachel doesn’t notice, or if she does, she pretends not to. The man takes her silence as an invitation to keep speaking, though. “If you go back where you came from, you’ll bring ruin upon them.” He says it so casually, it’s almost enough to make Rachel break her silence. She doesn’t, though. If she ignores this man, he will go away.

“Die here. Or in the woods. It’ll be easier,” he adds. And that is harder to ignore.

“Easier than what?” Rachel snaps. The man rolls his eyes.

“Than bringing ruin upon them, girl. If you die here, you won’t hurt anyone.”

As if Rachel has ever been concerned with that. She has more important things with which to concern herself, even if there was a chance that this man spoke true.

Which there isn’t.

She doesn’t get a chance to dwell on that. Her coffee arrives, and the waitress who dropped it off has this look in her eyes, like maybe she regrets setting it down, but Rachel ignores it. She takes a sip and--

And--

And--

Her world goes dark.

\--

Rachel awakens in the woods. She knows this is a bad thing, even if she's never put much stock in old stories. She knows this is a bad thing because she's in the woods, and she's alone, and it's cold, and--

“Don't you know, girl, that it's better to die?” asks the man from the hotel restaurant. Next to him is the waitress, looking, for all the good it does, regretful. Pained. Like this is something she must do, not something she wants to do.

Rachel would be able to sympathize, if Rachel knew how to do that. And if she was inclined to do so with someone who had drugged her coffee and brought her out into the woods without even a jacket. Rachel's arms are wrapped tightly around herself, and it takes so much strength just to haul herself to quaking feet. The high heels do not help, but she doesn't kick them off. To do so would put her feet in contact with the snow.

“Why do this? Why take me out here?” she demands, as if knowing would make it better. 

Neither answer.

“Tell me,” she says, cold as ice. Cold as winter in the woods.

“You're an offering, girl. To the faeries. We leave you here, and if they take you, they'll give us spring.”

Rachel sputters-- that's possibly the stupidest thing she's ever heard! What is their true motivation? Who put them up to this? But they're already turning away, walking off. They're already leaving and Rachel tries to follow, of course, but her trembling and unsteady shoes send her toppling to the ground, hardened dirt and ice scraping up her palms.

“You're cold, girl,” the man says, turning back to speak to her before they're out of earshot. “I'm cold. But you'll freeze to death out here, nice and painless. It's not a loss, girl, it's a gain. A gift. Whatever you wish for, death can give you. Winter nights are long and the woods were going to eat you anyway. Now the only difference is… the fae are going to do the eating, not some crows.”

And then he's gone. 

And Rachel is cold.

She's cold.

\--

A digression. We can digress, can't we? While Rachel waits to die in the cold. Of course we can, Rachel isn't going anywhere. So here, take this digression. Take the stories that Rachel ignored. Perhaps you will put them to use better than she could.

There was a woman, once, or maybe a girl, or maybe a crone. Her name was

… 

She can't remember. Started with an H. But that was a long time ago.

People used to tell stories about her. A girl who is not a girl, a woman who tries to help you at your most desperate, an old hag with too many teeth and words choking her rotting mouth… She could play any role, as long as she had cause.

But this woman is curious and she makes trades with people willing to give her something in exchange for her expertise. An angel, she calls herself. Angel, rage-made, trade-made. Her deals come with a price, one she paid once to save someone she loved and now what is left of the woman whose name goes something like Le-na but not is:

…

She doesn't know that either. 

A knot in the place that would be her stomach feels like the gnarled branches of those old, old trees. So she puts on her cloak of feathers, slides her feet into boots of leather, conceals her face that is her face that was once her sister’s (did she ever have a sister?) face, and: she is what she wishes to be.

Her boots have tasted snow before. And mud.

Today she is the banker, the benefactor. For hiding, not for hire. Her wild blonde hair sticks out from behind her fae-made mask.

Someone might recognize her if they could remember, could recall the woman with the wild eyes and warm smile and tangled hair and sunshine in her pockets. But there isn't. So they won't. 

The thing that was once a woman is old, old and heavy like thick mud and earth and summer in the woods. Nobody remembers the living woman, the one with the heartbeat, the heart that beat like: thunk-thunk. Thunk-thunk.

So she was safe. The woman was dead. As was everyone who knew her. They all died a long time ago. The woman was dead. 

But not this woman, the thing that was once a woman notes that this woman, lying in the cold, is alive and breathes in cold air and let's out warm air.

She, the once-woman, has some magic. More magic than this poor high-heeled no-jacket thing has. And the thing that was once a woman fumbles for her cloak, removes it, and wraps it around Rachel.

(This thing is not fae, but she knows that the woman here can either repay the favor or she can let the woman die. That's how it works. That's how all of this works.)

And the not-woman drags her. 

Back to her cabin in the woods. 

And she breathes. 

(She, meaning the woman, meaning the once-woman. It doesn't matter. They're practically the same.)


	2. Chapter 2

Rachel awakens indoors, but keeps her eyes shut so as not to let anyone know that she is conscious, if she can help it. Not that she always can but-- if. Wherever she is, it is warm. Whatever time is passing, it is infinitely slow.

She is so lost, so lost, she knows she doesn't know the woods but at least she's warm, wherever she is. 

She doesn't hear anyone else around, and wonders, briefly, if perhaps she is dead.

That would explain things, wouldn't it? Or perhaps not.

Rachel recalls the cold, how cold it was just before she lost consciousness, how she inhaled nails with every breath, couldn't feel her feet or face or fingers, wondering if she even had a face or feet or fingers left.

But now she does. Finally opening her eyes, Rachel flexes her fingers in front of her eyes as if to reassure herself of their continued existence.

All she sees is a blur, and everything stings, but she recognizes the sounds of a fireplace. Her extremities still tingle, she must not have been asleep for very long. But she is in a house. That is, of course, somehow better than the alternative.

“Who are you?” she asks the feather-clad figure sitting to the side, near to the crackling fire, and her voice is all shaky and scratchy, like the inside of her throat is still frozen and damaged, and her teeth won't stop chattering. Her skin is patchy, she can feel it. But she's alive. And it doesn't feel like lasting damage.

She pats herself down, and each part of her is in its proper place. Except for her shoes, stockings, and overshirt, but she sees those drying by the fireplace. 

Behind the strange stone-like mask, Rachel can feel a cold gaze.

“An angel,” the person--woman, based on the voice--responds, voice heavily accented and barely above a whisper. Rachel waits for a better answer, a real answer, but none comes. 

“People will be looking for me,” she says, just barely, with how much her words tremble in her still-cold mouth. She isn't sure the self-declared angel understands her until she comes closer, hovering in Rachel’s line of sight like a beast made of bird bones and leather with a mask that hides her face and why does she have that? Rachel cannot fathom. 

The masked thing ignores her words in favor of stoking the fire.

Rachel does not beg for mercy from whatever god or gods might be out there. That would be a stupid thing to do.

The surely-not-angel places a cup of tea down next to Rachel, tentatively. Like she isn't sure. Rachel isn't sure either.

It could be poisoned, for all she knows. Her fingers are still stinging too badly to grip it anyway.

The woman comes closer to Rachel, and she can't help the stupid burst of panic exploding in her chest at that, the worry, the--

“I am coming closer. I will not touch you. Breathe,” the thing says. Rachel can't. It's foolish of her, but she is choking. The thing that cannot be an angel approaches, and she is choking. That woman, that thing, is vile. 

She is a heap of patched leather and fur, self-hunted hides of small animals sewn together, some with their heads still attached, and of feathers from all sorts of dull brown birds, and of scraps of what once might have been a green jacket, but that's all speculation at this point. This thing has a mask, because of course she does, and it's got no features, just flat wood with two holes for eyes.

And Rachel knows, she knows, that sometimes people wear terrifying costumes to hide the fact that they are weak, but she has never seen anything this literally terror-evoking before, this is too much. Any thought of this thing before her perhaps being less horrifying beneath the mask and cloak flies right past her, on its merry way. Gone.

Because Rachel is choking and the horrible beast of a woman is trying to move her into an upright position. Rachel's eyes are so so so wide and she knows she shouldn't be this weak but what other choice does she have?

“This is my house, shh, zamkneseh. This is where I live, I would not let you meet my knives here. Breathe.”

And so Rachel makes herself breathe, and though she wants to, she does not shut her eyes, lest she let this thing see any more fear than her panic-stricken state forced her to demonstrate. 

She breathes. 

And she gets a warm towel for obeying. The fur-clad horror drops it right onto her head, and Rachel could almost swear she hears the thing laugh at its own actions.

But Rachel is… is fine. She is fine. She is… valuable, so someone will be looking for her. She will be found. And the monster whose house she resides in for the moment put in some effort to save her. That means she will likely stay alive a while yet. 

She thinks back to the sorts of things she learned, after her parents were killed, about how the best way to survive a kidnapping is to make one’s captors get attached, without developing some flavor of Stockholm Syndrome.

(As you might or might not have discovered, Rachel is terrible at following this advice. This advice typically works for someone a bit more likeable than Rachel Duncan.)

“My name,” she says, in an attempt to survive this kidnapping, “is Rachel Duncan.”

The monster is silent for a moment. Rachel wonders if a response will ever come. 

“You should not share your name. Names control. Still, it is nice to meet you, Rachel Duncan.”

She does not offer her own name. 

“Thank you,” Rachel says, politely. Rule one to surviving: make them like you. Give them no reason to get angry.

The angel laughs. “Ni. Those words are bad, Rachel Duncan. They mean you owe me a debt.”

Rachel wants to run. 

“I… like your house,” she tries. These rules are all new to her, but some things stay as they always are: she will not admit she owes a debt.

“Better,” says the horror. “You may survive until tomorrow, high-heeled thing.”


	3. Chapter 3

Rachel wakes up in the morning. This is something to be thankful for, she presumes, even if continued existence means continued existence here. The window shutters allow only a sliver of light through them but Rachel can see daylight if nothing else.

Candles, a lamp, and the seemingly ever-lit fireplace were the primary sources of light.

Rachel's childhood home had a fireplace. Her father-- no, Professor Duncan; he isn't anyone's father-- would light it on special occasions. Christmases and the like.

Rachel pushes thoughts of childhood away, and looks around. She is alone.

She stupidly wastes another six minutes checking the cabinets and wardrobe and every nook and cranny of this cluttered hut just to make sure she's alone. She doesn't see the angel. She only finds books, jars, dried spices, meat, sugar, and furs.

After confirming she is alone, she pulls her now-dry clothes on, endures the pain that comes from putting her high heels back on (a poor choice, for winter in the woods), steals a fur cloak from the wardrobe, and makes a run for it.

When the door is wrenched open, Rachel could swear she has gone blind, that the feeling of knives slashing her skin would kill her. But there are no knives. Just cold, bitter and unforgiving.

Snow piles into the hut, and when Rachel's eyes adjust she can see a trail of it leading out of the house and as far away as her eyes can see. And it's just snow, everything is all just snow. 

Her teeth are clacking within seconds, even with the furs, and it hurts even to open her eyes but she follows the path until hunger starts twisting her stomach and she wonders if she should have stolen some food or a map, but she had found neither during her search.

She collapses to the ground, defeated, as she realizes the choice she has: die out here, or go back to the hut.

She doesn't have time to actually decide, because she sees the angel in the distance, a faint figure in a sea of snow. 

And if Rachel can see the angel, then the angel can see Rachel.

So she turns to head back to the hut. What else is she supposed to do?

It's so cold. It's so cold and her body has not recovered from the previous day, and the cold doesn’t let up until she's back inside. 

She brings snow in with her.

She doesn't clean up after herself, merely tosses the stolen fur aside.

Sits, waits. 

She has no weapons.

She has nothing.

The angel returns, bringing snow in after her, wind at her back, and the wind whips at Rachel’s face, knives again.

(Rachel used to compare herself to ice and snow, she is now reconsidering that comparison.)

It's snowing harder, she can see as much from where she sits by the fire.

Rachel pretends she wasn't looking, eyes fixed on the wall.

“Such a grand escape, Rachel,” the angel tells her, in that scratchy and accented voice, and Rachel stiffens up, almost in a panic, because it echoes throughout the house, also she is, maybe, going to die for what she did, of course it would bring her trouble. 

Stupid, Rachel. An amateur mistake.

Rachel doesn't say anything, and neither does the angel. The angel merely pulls her cloak off, revealing that there is another, thinner one beneath the first.

Rachel notices now, for the first time, that the angel has tracked in not only snow, but blood.

“Where is Toronto?” Rachel asks.

“South of here,” she is told.

“And which way is south?”

“Southward,” the angel tells her, approaching slowly, and dropping two dead rabbits by her feet.

Rachel stares at them. They are small. They reek of blood.

“Do you know how to skin them?” the angel asks. 

A stupid question. Of course she doesn't.

“I will demonstrate with the first. Then you will skin the second. If you waste meat, you don't eat.”

Rachel resents this, all of this. The angel demonstrates the bitter work. Rachel replicates it in the cold. First she tries with her mittens, but they soon get covered in blood quickly. The angel’s rabbit looks like meat. Hers looks like a mess, but she finally manages to get the hide off, saw at the cords of the neck, guts the eyes like she was told to, and her bones ache with the cold by the time she's done, the bitterness of it. 

She hurls the bucket at the angel’s feet with her freezing bands.

“Stupid,” the angel responds. “Go warm your hands by the fire before you lose them.”

He pot over the fire smells of stew, and Rachel is too hungry to argue. She has rarely been hungry before, always having has enough to fill her belly, whenever she wanted. For all else she lacked, she had at least this.

“I assume I can have some, since I did your dirty work,” she asks, reigning in the snarl in her voice only on the last syllable, as the angel looks over whatever small amount of rabbit meat Rachel could salvage.

The angel fills both bowls, and Rachel takes hers to the corner near the fireplace where she had spent the night, while the angel sat at the table. The stew is bland, but it fills her stomach. She is still hungry after, but it would damage her pride to ask for seconds.

There's not much left in the pot anyway. The stew was mostly water. The angel cannot have been sated either, surely. There was no substance to the stew.

“They bring money every year,” says the angel, suddenly, “paper money, or old gold.”

Her voice is low and harsh and discordant, all one tone, and it's unsettling, and creepy, and calm, and Rachel has never seen a banshee before but she suspects that when their shrieking calms, they sound rather like this.

Rachel frowns at the floor. “The waitress and the man from the hotel?” she asks. “They give you money? For what?”

“They do this every year. They never get it right.”

Rachel thinks about it.

“They want you to make the winter end. I don't see why they don't just move somewhere warmer, if they have money to spend trying to buy… magic.”

The word tastes foolish on her tongue.

“I know what they want. Spring. They think it's better to buy it than to leave. Whether they are right or wrong is not up to me. They brought enough, for once, but you were not willingly given. You did not say yes, so no early spring for them.”

“So I can leave,” Rachel says. “You are not going to fight to keep me here, because I was not… willingly given. I can go.”

The angel makes a low giggly sound, and cracks the rabbit bones for marrow.

The wind outside howls.

“When the storm ends, of course,” she adds, indignation rising in her.

The angel laughs properly, then, and loudly too. It's not a dignified laugh. Rachel knows it, though. It's the laugh one hears in clubs and office buildings both, on trains and in hotels. The sort of laugh reserved for foolish, scared women who don't understand inconvenience. 

How long until the storm ends? Hours? Days? She does not want to ask, certainly does not want to spend another night here. 

The angel is not kind, but she has been polite.

Rachel is somehow grateful. Even if she would never say so.

None of that means she can stand to look at that monstrous costume, however. Not for more than a few seconds.

Even though Rachel is sitting by the fire, she can feel the cold seeping into her bones. She would wear her jacket, but it's still drying by the fire, so she opts for the fur blanket she had used the night before, and notices that there is only one blanket in the hut.

She shrugs it off. She doesn't care.

“It is going to get colder,” the angel says, after Rachel shivers. “I have chores for you, Rachel Duncan, if you want dinner later.”

Oh, what a lucrative deal.

Rachel wants to leave, but Rachel can't get what she wants right now. What she can get us a stack of rags, and a needle and thread.

This is stupid.

She doesn't even know how to sew.

She fumbles through anyway. Makes a terrible patchwork blanket of rags, and a few small pelts. The angel has the uncomfortable habit of leaving the heads on.

She manages to get about six inches of blanket made, and is rewarded with rabbit stew for dinner.

“If these people give you money to try and buy spring,” Rachel begins, and it sounds ridiculous to her ears, but she presses on, “should you not be able to afford a better blanket?”

“You will understand soon,” says the angel.

Rachel stares at the angel’s hands, as they eat. They are just hands, after all, all the way across the hut, because no, Rachel is not going to go near that thing, but they are hands just like Rachel's hands are hands. The angel is wearing gloves indoors, though, which is probably not a bad idea in this weather.

The gloved hands have five fingers, which is something of a relief.

The supposed angel might be human.

“What is your name?” Rachel asks. “You know mine, tell me yours.”

The angel sets down her bowl.

“I will tell you for a price,” she says, very quietly, and Rachel realizes that this sets the tone for all of their interactions. “What will you offer?”

“I don't _have_ anything,” Rachel scoffs. “Forget it. I don't care.”

“Tak. You will let me know when you change your mind.”


	4. Chapter 4

The storm does not stop the next day. If anything, it has gotten worse. Rachel does not want to stay, but knows it would be stupid to try her luck and escape.

(Rachel is catching on, at last.)

Her sewing is atrocious.

She's still doing that. The blanket still isn't finished.

Not that it matters what it looks like, since the one she has is just as ugly.

Honestly, for someone who mentions magic, surely the angel must have a spell for better stitching, one that wouldn't cost Rachel all these pricks to her finger.

She has yet to see any actual magic, though. But there is a pair of human-looking feet in one of the angel’s jars and blood in half a dozen others. 

Rachel doesn't want to see any supposed magic any more than she wants to see the contents of that hideous costume.

But surely, little things couldn't hurt.

More proof that the angel is a fraud, she supposed.

The angel is perhaps ten feet away, and although Rachel is distinctly not looking, she knows that she is knitting.

She has never known anybody to knit, before.

Rachel has jumped at every howl of the wind and every creak of ancient wood in the walls. She cannot believe she is truly here, stuck here, in a hut of all things. Not even a proper lodge, but a one room hut.

The angel turns her way sometimes and Rachel presses herself against the wall and acts unremarkable and uninteresting.

It is a technique that has served her well, when she cannot stare someone down.

She wants to run. 

She has never been able, successfully, to run.

Rachel has considered the door, and each time the angel looks away, Rachel has considered making a run for it.

She wants to scream. She doesn't. She is nothing if not controlled. Or so she has always felt.

So she does not scream, but instead searches her pockets, pulls out a quarter she must have placed in there and forgot about. 

She threads it between her fingers, worthless pocket change. Doubly worthless here. She has always preferred cards, but cash spends easier and so sometimes she has that.

She jolts where she sits when she feels eyes on her. She freezes, stops breathing, knows at once what she did wrong.

The quarter in her hand falls to the floor as she jolts.

She quickly snatches it up. Time has lost all meaning and the sound that the coin had made hitting the floor had sounded as deafening as a pistol shot.

“Show me,” the angel says.

“It is only a quarter,” she snaps, angry, oh so angry. She wants to say the angel can have it, but that would mean the angel would come closer to her.

“What is it worth?” the angel asks.

Rachel doesn't know, tries not to imagine what might happen if she answers wrong. 

The angel sets aside her knitting and slithers Rachel's way.

Rachel's skin crawls.

“Tell me.”

Rachel's eyes are dry. She reminds herself to blink.

Her hands are shaking now, but her face is impassive. One might mistake her shaking for cold rather than fear, and the storm’s howl accompanies the sound of Rachel dropping it to the floor once again. 

She stares at it, and remembers to blink. 

“What is it worth?” the angel asks again, in that harsh-mocking whisper of hers.

“Twenty-five cents, Canadian,” Rachel says, sliding the coin away from herself.

“It's enough,” the angel says, though she sounds sour. “I'll hold up my end of the deal. My name is, mmm, Helena.”

The name sounds foreign, faraway, and Rachel remembers for just a second that monsters lie.

“Is it really?” she asks, and she is just so stupid.

“Yes. It is Helena.”

Rachel chances a quick glance up, and yes, polite angel Helena is still a hovering monstrosity.

She means to be hospitable, Rachel knows. She can tell, unfortunately. She is used to hospitality she never wanted.

If she thinks that wearing that costume is more hospitable than appearing as she truly is, well.

Rachel does not know what to say. 

She feels ill.

She does not know what to say, settles on, “A pleasure to meet you.”

“You as well,” Helena responds. “Welcome to my home.”

“Quite right. Why did you--” save me, Rachel wants to ask, but the blood freezes in her veins because the angel is removing her gloves, and beneath them are hands, and they are red as blood, but dry as bone, and she knows they are dry because the angel is pressing them over her mouth, and the mask on her face has tiny Cyrillic lettering around the eyes, and this thing literally came out of nowhere, and Rachel is terrified. And she would scream but the hand is pressed to her mouth. It would be pointless.

“Stupid,” the angel snaps at her, and pulls her hand away once Rachel has finished screaming. 

“Wh-what?” Rachel says after a moment, and the adrenaline still coursing through her could have her run for miles, but there is nowhere to go, so she hides in her corner and makes no eye contact. 

And then there is the dull clack of plastic against wood as the angel sets a cheery purple cup beside her. It smells of tea.

The bowls they ate from were stone… but the angel has plastic cups?

Rachel catches a glimpse of the withdrawing hands that set the cup there.

They are as red as lipstick.

Consciously, the angel hides them.

“Stupid,” she snarls, and Rachel realizes she's got tears welling up in her eyes. She is stupid.

The angel looks like a thing from nightmares, and now Rachel knows that she can act the part. But what can she do to Rachel that is worse than merely looking at her up close?

Horrible things, Rachel supposes, in an afterthought. Bloody and unspeakable things. But she has figured that anyway.

The angel watches her.

The angel probably knows what she is thinking.

“I rarely have… visitors,” she offers, and her whisper is spun silk all over again. “I let you stay by my fireplace that you are so fond of, and you be my guest until it is safe for travel. Do we have a deal?”

She means more than she is saying, the same way, Rachel now knows, that she cannot express gratitude without indenting herself.

She thinks back to all the stupid things she has said in this hut, every word, and searches deeply for the exact moment she gave her soul away.

The angel (Helena, apparently) sighs, presses the tea closer.

“Calm down. It is just oolong.”

“Nothing else?”

“I have chamomile in an outpost. I will bring it when the storm calms.”

“I am leaving,” Rachel says, and pretends her hands aren't shaking, “when the storm calms. You said I could.”

“I'd laugh at you,” Helena informs him. “If you have another quarter, I'll show you a map.”

She holds out her red hand, palm up, and all Rachel can think about are all the ways words can be twisted.

“A map of where we actually are,” she says, and she is stupid for saying it, for agreeing to any sort of deal, but her quarters are worthless here. “Relevant and helpful, if you would. And I can look at it whenever I like.”

“You can look at it any time you are in the house,” the angel declares.

Rachel drops her last quarter into the angel’s palm, wonders about its texture, waits.

Helena-the-angel pockets it, goes to rummage through a cabinet, returns with the map. 

The town she is in is clearly marked, and Rachel knows she is not being tricked. But there are roads she has never heard of, which give way to trails and bridges, and then eventually not even the tiniest of roads.

“This,” the angel points to a black dot, far away from anything and everything, “is where you are.”

“... Oh.” That certainly explained a few things, didn't it?


	5. Chapter 5

Night is as eerie and cold as ever, and it is on one of these nights that Rachel sees it-- the magic.

(Not that she would call it that.

Aloud.)

The wind outside batters at the door with a vicious temper, and the hut creaks beneath the blizzard’s heavy hand, unsettlingly.

Burnt wood cracks in the fireplace. The flame is low, hovering beneath the comfortable limit. Rachel is cold, there is no way around it, and the frost that creeps into the space that the heat leaves behind is almost intolerable.

She looks over toward where the angel sleeps, beneath a pile of rags and coats and pelts, buried with her face in the ratty pillows, and probably maskless. There is a heap of fur on the floor, and Rachel assumes it is part of the costume.

She gets up, fixes the fire quickly, and rushes back to her corner.

She can't sleep. Not here. Not like this.

Her eyes ache, but she sees things in the shadows, long and ghastly, watching her through the cracked door of a wardrobe and from the darkest corner.

It is then that the angel rises from her bed.

Her silhouette is sickly, a bent shape among the many twisted shapes in the hut. She throws on her cloak, her mask, and magic pours through the eyeholes.

She gets out some dried meat from the trapdoor in the floor, leaves it on the table, and vanishes-- literally vanishes, without so much as a glance at Rachel.

Her departure is so sudden, and silent, that Rachel still searches the hut for shadows, for signs of that warped silhouette.

When Rachel realizes that she is alone, she realizes that she is alone with the shapes in the dark and the monsters in the wardrobe.

She does not scream.

But she does consider it.

In the aftermath of what follows, Rachel is glad to have not screamed.

There, on the floor where the angel had last stood, is a dead boy.

Rachel steps over it and ignore it, and lights every lantern she can find until there is enough light and she can be sure that whatever wicked thing comes for her, she will see it.

Only then does she turn her eyes to the child.

His neck is broken, obviously, and his eyes are glassy. He looks recently dead.

There is a telltale smudge of lipstick on his forehead, that speaks more than any murder confession.

Rachel doesn't know if she is supposed to feel angry or not, doesn't know whether it is rage boiling in her chest at this sight, but she avoids the corpse, does not even look at it.

She doesn't know what to do about the corpse of a child appearing in the hut as though by magic. She doesn't.

The angel reappears and Rachel stares dead ahead at the vile thing, into the eyeholes of the mask.

“Step back,” the angel demands.

“Why should I?” Rachel responds, defiant not because she cares about a dead child (because it's a corpse now, not a child at all), but because she feels she must always defy.

“I did not kill him. Step away, without a fight. Give.”

She reaches for the corpse with her ugly red hands. Rachel takes a step back and snarls, “Make me move, if you want me to do so that badly, _make_ me! Don't-- don't touch me!”

There's an angel's hand pressed to her mouth again, and Rachel stiffens. Do Not Touch Me, she thinks, with all her venom.

“Stupid,” says Helena, and her voice shakes, up and down like the motion of a boat. “His soul is departing, to Heaven.”

Her other hand is on the boy's forehead, gender as she brushes bangs out of eyes, as if the child were merely sleeping. “Hush, go now, please don't linger. Tak…” she murmurs, before turning to Rachel. “Hold him for me.”

The angel has a knife (because of course she does), sharp-looking and engraved with a winged fish on its handle, shimmering.

Rachel backs away.

“You were skeptical, I could see as much, so now you will see. Hold him. And,” she motions with her knife, “don't touch this. It is magic. You could die. It is all hexed. Just hold the boy.”

She touches the child with the flat of the no-touch knife, and makes a gesture as if severing.

“Go.”

Nothing happens, that Rachel can see.

She doesn't know what she expected. Of course the magic is all a fraud. 

“You just accepted this-- corpse?” Rachel demands. “Oh, this is rich, did you give her your name too?”

“It was the cost of summoning me, not the price of her wish, I did not-- would not have asked for this. Give me the boy.”

Rachel is not sure. She is not sure if anything.

“If you hand him over, I will show you,” the words become a hiss, “the mother’s deal.”

Rachel doesn't want another bargain, but she also does not wish to keep holding onto a corpse.

So she pays up, and Helena touches the blade of the knife to Rachel's bare hand, and kills her.

Rachel drops dead.

She watches her body fall and appreciates how much agony is involved in taking a breath, how much it aches to live. Her body hits the ground and the sounds it makes are colors, swirls and shapes, and she is the world, and the world is sound, and there is nothing to know. And all she feels is Leekie’s grief, because, it seems, he is the only one who will miss her. 

“You are not dead,” the angel informs her, and as if on cue, her body, lying flat on the floor, breathes. L

And then there is no floor, no body, no hut.

Instead there is an apartment, and the woman in it jolts and shudders where the angel appears. Edie her. There is chalk on the floor, and a little girl lying in her lap. She has braids, a green dress, and a broken neck.

“Where is it?” she demands, sounding panicked. “You owe me--”

She sees her sons body, held tightly in the angel's arms.

“No!” she cries. “Don't turn this into guilt! I loved him so much! I just wanted to make sure the rest of my children could have the comfort they deserve! Right from the start! Never hungry, never scrounging! Take him away, and take Mimi! I paid! Give me what you owe!” She shrieks it, the sound making Rachel flinch. She closes her eyes, impassive. If one didn't know any better, they might even say bored.

“I brought the money,” the angel whispers, calm, “Shh, hold your son and you will have it.”

The woman stares through Rachel, sighs, accepts the boy.

She doesn't notice the pennies slicing through his eyelids.

She does notices the ones pouring through her daughter’s lips, ripping through her face.

And then Rachel is on the floor of the hut, once more, not screaming, distinctly not screaming.

Helena brings her tea.

Adds a generous amount of sugar.

Places the blanket onto her shoulders. 

Pets Rachel, like one might do a dog.

“You are depraved,” Rachel mutters. “I want to go home.”

(Oh, impossibilities.)

“You must pay, if you want me to take you. Otherwise, you will wait for spring, or die in the cold.”

Helena turns away.

“You want me here!” Rachel accuses. “You want me to stay here because you are depraved and lonely! You think we're friends because you have me a spot on your floor, even though I don't have money ripping through my… even though I'm not… you could do me a favor and take me home, why keep me here?”

“I don't owe you any favors. I cannot take you home.”

“You just… did that, you can do what you like, it seems. You wish to keep me here, you pathetic thing.”

“She got what she paid for. You should shut up now, Rachel, before you say something stupid and I take your deal. Your caretakers have been trying to locate you for days, one might think to summon something like me.”

“Doctor Leekie is looking for me. What if the Institute tracks me here?”

The storm outside howls.

“Pray it doesn't.”


	6. Chapter 6

“Your hands look like blood,” Rachel tells the angel, because she's just stabbed her finger with the needle again, and that has her testy, “because you've spilt blood all over your evil, vile hands.”

The angel considers this.

“Yes,” she says.

“Likely, you are just as ugly as your hands. You must wear the mask to distract from that.”

“You must wear a mask over your heart, Rachel Duncan,” and the angel's whisper has a bite, “to distract from the fact that you're cold and lonely.”

Rachel feels brave.

“Yes.” She sets her jaw.

From her seat across the room from Rachel, the angel laughs, and so Rachel backtracks the conversation to where she wanted her to die horribly. She's too tired and too hungry and too cold for this conversation.

“So. How ugly?” she asks instead. 

“I don't know,” the angel says, and Rachel is about to retort, but then the angel moves, and instinctively, Rachel cowers.

She is but a corporate drone, a forgettable thing on the angel’s floor.

For one wild, stupid moment, Rachel thinks the angel is finally going to kill her already, but the weather is, as ever, more important than she is.

“The storm is letting up. Get up, Rachel Duncan.”

The angel tosses her a pair of boots, so Rachel doesn't have to wear her heels out into the snow again. They're ugly boots, but they mostly fit.

The angel also packs gloves, matches, an ice pick, a net… where are they going?

Rachel feels dread in every corner of the hut, dread that seeps into her skin, pushing aside her newfound bravery and longstanding disgust. She's getting kicked out, she thinks. She throws a desperate glance around the hut, eyes falling onto her borrowed map, trying to burn into to her memory.

Stupid. She should have done it earlier. Should have hidden her disgust, kept her mouth shut.

She never does learn, though.

“Where are you taking me?” she whispers.

Helena catches the terror in her voice, latches on, and it doesn't matter if she says a lie or not, if monsters always lie or not.

“Fish traps,” she says. “If you see wood on the ground on the way, pick it up. Fire is life, Rachel Duncan.”

“How far…?”

“Four hours until nightfall. We have to be back by then. Never go outside in the dark, Rachel Duncan. There are worse things than me in the woods… wolves, fae, the shrines to old gods, my sister. Many things. Do not go outside at night.”

It was just one time, and Rachel had really needed to use the privy, and she has a heart condition to prove she'll never try again.

They carve paths into the snow, drag a sled behind them. It's almost a crime to disturb something so finely sprinkled like powdered sugar, to disturb something so deceptively fluffy, and if Rachel had more sentiment she might advise against it. They ruin the landscape between occasional trees. Helena does not let a single fallen branch go ungathered.

Helena.

An unfit name for a vile thing.

Part of Rachel wishes she had never asked, but she wonders if trying for at least some familiarity with this creature was a thing that saved her life. Playing nice with monsters had saved her as a girl, after all, even if the monsters were the less literal sort, the sort that hid their monstrosity behind human faces.

This, she supposes as she struggles through the woods, is a kind of life, anyway.

Even if she doesn't understand what she did to deserve this.

They come to a clearing eventually. The harsh wind has stopped for the moment and the dunes of snow are unnaturally smooth, silent, still. The dread leaves Rachel momentarily in favor of anger-- how dare anything look so perfect and picturesque when she feels so angry?

So she just kind of runs (stumbles)-- boots leaving enormous and messy footprints in the waist-deep snow. Just to corrupt the flawless surface.

If Helena thinks this is a daring escape, she doesn't seem to care, just watches.

When Rachel returns, Helena starts digging. “I will tell you, Rachel Duncan, because you should know… that this lake is around eighty feet deep.”

And with that, she hands Rachel a shovel.

“Lake?” Rachel questions, looking around them, and then: “Oh.”

“Oh indeed, Rachel Duncan.”

They dig. They dig until they hit ice, and then the angel ushers Rachel off the ‘lake’ and over to the ‘pier’ and warns her to be careful of the ‘beach’.

Rachel sees literally none of these things here. 

She just sees snow.

So Rachel backs up, and the angel hammers at the ice with her pick. It's a laborious task. The ice is deep.

What a tedious way to live.

“The trap is stuck, Rachel Duncan. Please keep watch for wolves.”

Helena sighs, pulls off her outermost coat.

“You're insane,” Rachel tells her.

Helena rolls her sleeve up, and Rachel is in a habit of never looking at the angel directly but this time she stares. Above the sanguine hand, there is pale skin. A perfectly human and ordinary flesh-tone. Rachel hadn't expected to see it on the angel.

But what she expected instead? Scales, feathers? That would be stupid.

And then Helena’s hand disappears into the icy water. She grimaces, rummaging around, removes the trap. There are two fish inside, and they wiggle until Helena crudely slams them into the hard ice. 

There are a few more traps after that, and the rest have no complications.

Then it starts to snow.

Helena says there is one trap left, and Rachel finally believes she will keep her skin intact for one more day.

Helena says they will be back with time to spare, and Rachel feels brave (and hungry) enough to supply her (stupid) city-girl opinion.

“We will lose the daylight,” Helena says with a laugh, “but okay. Last trap. More fish.”

She retrieves a single, pathetically small fish from the trap, and they head back.

The sled is heavier this time. Weighed down with food.

In the woods, you don't quite notice you're a dead man walking until you are. It isn't difficult to move in the headwind until it is, until it's impossible. 

Helena holds Rachel's stupid hand and keeps her close.

“Just magic us back! You can apparently do that!” Rachel shots over the winds.

If Helena has eyes behind her mask, surely she rolls them, and turns them back to the lake.

“Where are we going?” Rachel demands.

But night sneaks up on them just as the storm did.

Rachel clings and clings to the offered hand, refuses to be left behind, refuses to let the angel revoke hospitality.

And then Helena tells her to dig in the snow-- and there's a door.

It's pitch black inside, and freezing, and Rachel had never appreciated any place more.

She checks to make sure she still has a face, because the wind felt like it was searing it off.

Her hands lost feeling so she can't tell, but this place is real.

The angel lights a match, finds an oil lamp and lights that too.

The shed is seven feet by four feet of glorious shelter from the storm.

It's packed with shovels and barrels, but there is no wind inside.

There angel is so close to her now, and Rachel tries to shrink away because it's dark and the dark is unkind, and she doesn't want to touch this thing, has never in her life wanted to touch anyone. But there is no room to shrink.

She ducks under the loft, but there is no room for her here just as there was no room in Helena's house, but the angel took her in anyway.

Rachel eyes the loft that's no wider than four feet by four, and piled with bedding. Feels the frost on the ground that's unbearable, pictures a pile of baby animals huddling for warmth, wonders if human siblings do it too (she wouldn't know, has never had any).

She shivers, and bows her head.

“Was I right about your hands?”

“Yes.”

“Keep them to yourself,” Rachel says, trying to sound as firm as nails, as firm as she used to be able to sound.

“Likewise.”

She feels annoyance in the pit of her stomach.

“I… like… your awful shed,” she says, and though her words contradict, she means ‘thank you again for the shelter.’

“You are welcome, Rachel Duncan.”


	7. Chapter 7

The angel-- Helena-- breathes raggedly, short gasping breaths, and curls in on herself as she sleeps.

Rachel can't tell, really, if she's truly asleep, or just lying awake and staring at nothing just like she is, but she knows the angel sleeps with her head covered in her jacket and likes to hog blankets. 

The wall of the shed is damp after thawing, and Rachel spends the night pressed into it with her knees, her forehead, cowering from the thing behind her. She dared a quick peek, in the dead of night, just once.

Between them, she's managed to find a full three inches of space.

The angel-- Helena-- manages to balance herself in the very edge of the loft and still sleep buried in blankets.

Rachel doesn't check, doesn't need to, she's sure the angel is facing away from her and gives her what precarious distance permits them to sleep with blessed inches between them.

But it's cold. And it's miserable.

The fire beneath them crackles and warms, but only slightly. Only barely.

Behind her, the angel stirs, woken by the sudden absence of wailing winds outside.

The storm has passed, and through the gaps in the roof, Rachel can see that it is morning.

“Well,” she hears, and it sounds less like some kind of fae monster, that voice on that word, more like a real voice. Helena seems to realize this. “That was unpleasant,” she says, replacing the mask before turning to look at Rachel.

She sleeps with the mask off, Rachel notes.

Good to know. Useless. Kind of vile.

And anyway, they dig the sled out, and get out of there. Rachel misses the floor of the angel’s house, after that. Even that is better than this.

But soon they are returning, and she knows she will learn to loathe that floor anew once she reaches it.

As they cross the lake, Rachel notices tracks. Fresh ones. If even she notices them, surely the angel must. The mask shows nothing, but now Rachel is on high alert, every part of her. 

She sucks in as much frosty air as her lungs can handle.

And then she screams.

“HEL-!”

The angel shoves her into the snow. 

She tries to crawl away, but the angel sits atop her like a wrestling child and clamps her mouth shut.

“People do not come here, Rachel Duncan,” she hisses, “to help anyone but themselves.”

The snow Rachel is lying in is bitter cold. Every bit of fight she had in her is gone. Rachel is not used to fighting, least of all in the cold.

Her limbs drop to her sides.

“If they choose to help you, you can leave with them,” the angel says, right up against her face, and Rachel screws her eyes shut and imagines she is anywhere else. “They won't though. Get up. We're almost there.”

She does as she’s told, doesn’t bother dusting the snow off, just drags the sled and doesn’t look up.

They follow the tracks, and perhaps the most merciless thing about snow is that it makes hiding impossible.

Not that the disheveled man limping towards them is hiding. He looks on the verge of death.

They probably don't look much better, but hell, it means the man made it all the way out here in the fucking storm.

The angel lies, it's all a lie.

Rachel quits being a coward, and runs.

She doesn't look back, screams for help.

It's not a man - it's a woman, it's the woman from the hotel, and she roars when she sees her.

"We paid for it!" she screams, and Rachel stumbles backward. "We gave you so much, you cheating bitch!"

Behind Rachel, the angel stands. She is unmovable and unmoved. She is a stark pillar against white backdrop, and the trees behind her are clawed black hands.

She is a nightmare in daylight.

She almost, sort of, looks like an angel, like this. The biblical sort. All of God’s wrath made fleshen.

“She lies,” Rachel laughs, almost delirious with the cold now. She has never been so angry before. “She lies and cheats.”

“The businesswoman?” the waitress shouts, not listening to Rachel, not listening to anyone, throwing her head to the sky and laughing aloud. “You accepted, you bitch! You took her and you never paid for her! You killed my father when we paid you to fix the weather!”

The angel speaks then, at a whisper, one that carries her voice to the both of them. She's a good ten feet away from Rachel, who is in turn about seven feet from the waitress. Still, she can almost feel the angel’s breath in her ears.

Rachel's skin crawls.

“You made no deal. Nothing you offered was yours to give. There are rules. Ni, laws.”

“Then what do you call this?” she demands, grabbing Rachel’s arm and dragging her close.

“A guest. Now leave, unless you have something else you want.”

The waitress laughs again, desperate and wild. “I want my family back! I want spring!”

“You cannot afford it. Leave.”

The angel says these words, then keeps silent for a moment as the waitress wails and screams, swats at Rachel, has her whole miserable tantrum.

“I can take you back to the nearest town,” the angel says, “if you make me a deal.”

The waitress stops.

Anyone would stop, for a lifeline.

“What kind of deal, you bitch? I've got nothing left,” she says, quietly, more to herself than to the angel.

“Tak. Your life is worth nothing,” the angel agrees, voice like ice. 

The waitrsss thinks, and Rachel plays bystander to a scene that scrapes at her soul, she wants to leave too, wants the waitress to take her with her in this deal, wants the waitress to die so Rachel can go instead. But she can't bring herself to deal with this monster. Nothing is worth it. What can this hotel waitress even offer, for one trip? Her future firstborn? Her very organs?

“If you take me back to town,” she says, finally, “I'll give you a liter of blood.”

Rachel's eyes widen a fraction, but she schools her face into neutrality.

She doesn't want to hear this. She doesn't want to know.

“Fair enough,” the angel says, and her whisper is tinged with weariness. “We have a deal.”

The waitress is silent for a good minute, seems not to know what to say. At last she laughs. “You fucking murdered everyone I ever loved! And I'm still giving you blood, you piece of shit!”

Helena doesn't move. The waitress takes two steps forward. “A guest, huh?” she says in the softest of venom-voices. “We were going to send twenty virgins, but then you showed up. They would be guests. They would be guests!”

She has a knife. Of course she has a knife, everyone except Rachel has a knife, and she comes at Rachel with precision. Rachel ducks, but moving is difficult in jackets and furs. She can't find footing in the snow. Also, she is miserable at physical fighting. 

Vengeful fighters are erratic, and, had Rachel caught her on a better day, she'd be dead.

Rachel backs up until she can go no further, and falls backwards. She kicks at the waitress, right in the knee, knocks her over and pulls hair, the only way she knows how to fight, knocks the knife away.

“I'm going back to the house,” she says, her voice the illusion of calm, even though she is panting. “Take her blood here, but don't--”

And then…

She doesn't quite feel pain, exactly, but her leg gives out. She falls. 

She doesn't understand, but the waitress has her knife back, and she's crawling towards her, and there's blood in the snow.

The waitressfalls forward on her face then, exhausted or maybe dead.

Rachel falls onto her back, unable to keep upright. The sky is the bluest blue she has ever seen. She can't get enough of it. For a moment, she manages to convince herself that she can go home.

And the angel coming to block her view of the sky does not spoil her life one bit.

The angel checks the waitress’ pulse. “Dead. The cold. Come. The wolves will waste nothing.”

Rachel doesn't know where they stand anymore.

She doesn't try to get up. She lies in the snow and stares at the sky, where, if she only knew, God-or-something-like is laughing at a stupid businesswoman. An old god, probably.

But the angel-- something is off. Something is off and Rachel will live in the shed and steal fish and run home, she’ll fight, if the angel decides she is a guest no longer. She will not die out here.

“Can you stand, Rachel?”

“What?”

“Your leg is bleeding. Stand up.”

Rachel looks over. The snow around her foot is red all over.

Oh.

It doesn't really hurt. The snow is probably numbing it. It just feels dull, loose and very wrong.

She can move her toes. Sort of.

Probably, it's broken.

But it's fine.

It has to be. All she needs to do is breathe.

“I'm fine,” she manages, sporting her best poker face.”

The angel offers her hand, and Rachel decides that being pitiful has kept her alive so far, so she takes it, holds back a grimace.

She gets up, plays weight on her leg, and it gives again, sending her stumbling forward. It barely hurts. 

The angel catches her, and Rachel decides that this is too pitiful. She shoves at her, and drops into the snow.

She feels along her calf, through the bulky snow pants. She feels where she was cut, and it is everything she can do to keep calm enough not to scream the most vile profanities she knows.

Her tendon was severed. She was cut all the way through. If the cold hadn't numbed her, she'd be in agony.

She will never walk on this leg again.

“No. No, no no. No! No deal, I don't want a deal!”


End file.
